An admission: I'm awful at following up with ex-clients or potential clients.

I get busy. I'm shy. There's always something else to do that doesn't involve human contact.

I'm an expert at knowing how important follow-up is and how to do it. I'm not so good at actually doing it.

At least not naturally.

The one thing I've found that saves me is systems.

Not necessarily IT systems. Just regular habits.

I may be bad at remembering to follow up. But I can manage to stick to my system of doing my planning every Monday morning.

And I can stick to my system of reviewing my list of the people I want to keep in touch with every month and thinking of ways I could follow-up with them this week.

And if I then put time in my schedule to do the follow-up, it usually gets done.

Systems are my secret weapon that overcome my own uselessness at this stuff.

Armed with a system I can do better, more consistent follow-up than a natural without a system.

That's good enough for me. And it's good enough to get great results.

If you're not a natural at follow-up (or even if you are) it's worth implementing a simple system like this yourself.

They're easy to stick to and they work.